People presumably still want the recession form of death than the pandemic one, it's not even a competition. There is no amount of evidence you can present to the public that would make this call even a close one. "ten times as many will die from the recession unless we let X people die now" doesn't work.

Rather an economic crisis than losing some of your loved ones a decade or two before their time. Get the authorities in place to be the safety net and take the measures required. Preventing a major GDP bump downwards is not worth millions of lives.